Who is KerryAnn?
My name is KerryAnn and I am an Australian who loves our great country and living a simple lifestyle.
10 years ago my husband and I joined the growing trend of over 50’s traveling full time enjoying life, our country, and nature.
We started a mobile retail business to provide income to finance our travels. This allowed us to stop working full-time and begin to work part-time.
My very first blog details my personal life story prior to embarking on this RV lifestyle, my journey to build a blog and create an online business that would finance our travels.
Scribbling in a Journal.
I am a creator of notes, lists, and journals. I love to keep records of the things that I have learned during my lifetime.
In a past life, I considered writing a book but the creation of the wide world web offers so many other options therefore I elected to blog instead.
This blog began as a journal of my travels and lifestyle, and almost 4 years later, I realized that I had made many mistakes.
My lack of knowledge led to a blog that was all over the place, and often the information was not correct.
I had no plan of action and did not consider who my audience might be.
You can learn from my mistakes and save yourself a huge headache.
Stop, Think And Re-create
Ten years into our full-time nomadic lifestyle we realized the product range we were selling was moving in a downward market trend.
Fewer customers, reduced margins, higher business costs, and stronger competition led to a decision to stop traveling and give ourselves time to evaluate the future. We obtained part-time jobs to have an income.
When the pandemic hit in early 2020, we decided to stay put for a while longer and see it out.
This gave me time to rethink my blog and the direction I wanted to take. I believe I can help people who may find themselves looking for options to the traditional 9-5 work-life.
As jobs were lost in early 2020, and the future was looking bleak for some, I considered people would be looking for options.
As time passed and people negotiated lockdowns, I believe some people realized there was more to life than working.
There are people looking for ideas to provide a semi-retired lifestyle ahead of time. Others have found the work-from-home lifestyle appealing. When there were restrictions on eating out, it became apparent that home cooking was not only tastier but healthy for the budget.
Working less, earlier retirement, and lifestyle alternatives seem to be getting traction on social media. Rising inflation has caused people to worry about the cost of food, housing, and everyday living costs. I believe many aspects of my lifestyle can help others
Why I Want to Help People
In 2019, I had an experience where I was kicked off an airline.
I had paid my fare 10 months in advance, and because I had a cheap fare and the airline decided to downsize the plane, I was put on a longer later flight. Why me? I was told I had not paid enough for my fare, so I joined the back of the queue. I feel like I was treated like a second-class citizen.
Not happy Richard.
Many people online feel the same way about those of us who are trying to build a life without forking out thousands of dollars for courses, books, software, and other information.
We may be freebie seekers, but we are human beings first.
When funds are tight and we are looking for ways to stretch the dollar further and perhaps earn a little extra, gathering information online can be a minefield. A lot of information is available in the form of an info commercial.
I do acknowledge that some money is required to build an online business. However, when you have a limited budget it is necessary to ensure that any money spent will give great value.
Freebie seekers can find information if they are prepared to spend thousands of hours doing research, trying things for themselves, and observing what others are doing rather than what they are saying. I have done this.
Whilst some courses are good and do offer a shortcut to research, many courses, in my opinion, are too expensive. This may be due to the creator needing to recover their marketing costs, not because of the value of the content.
Freebie seekers are not stingy, we just need to apportion our funds to where we will get the most benefit.
One goal of my blog is to help people gather information without resorting to a life of debt.
What knowledge and life experience do I have that enables me to help others?
I have spent most of my life living on a low income, and have partnered with my husband to own and operate two businesses, traveled full time for 10 years, had camping adventures, and spent thousands of hours gathering information and learning content marketing.
We have no house (sold it 10 years ago), no credit cards, and no possessions to flip to cover emergencies (living in an RV doesn’t allow for many possessions). We have a leased block of land in a remote area that has served as a home base during the pandemic. Unfortunately, we cannot stay here forever.
We do plan to buy another home base somewhere in the country where land is cheap. No flash house, just an old shack or the ability to add some sort of structure. There are houses for sale around Australia for under $100K if you are patient and not worried about aesthetics.
I have many faults and made many mistakes in my journey and will share to help others avoid making the same mistakes.
We are currently refocusing and preparing for the next 20 years of part-time travel. We have officially retired and are accessing our small amount of retirement savings. As we are drawing down around 15 percent and will take out a large chunk to cover a home base, this will only last until we can access the aged pension through Centrelink.
As we travel without needing to dedicate time to our retail business, we will be able to enjoy our hobbies which include hunting for stones and gemstones, prospecting for gold, walking, and photographing scenery and nature.
We aim to create products from stones and gems that we find on our travels and hopefully find some gold to sell.
Creating this blog, the abovementioned products, and our retirement withdrawals will provide a little income to fund our travels
I am documenting my journey with words, pictures, and video.
I will succeed or my life will blow up spectacularly. As I share my life with my readers I am focusing on the former.
Building businesses from scratch.
My husband and I started our first mobile business from scratch in 1985 with around $200 in the bank. In order to turn this into a bricks-and-mortar one, we sold our house to raise $18,000 for working capital.
Our first business gave us an income and like most small businesses a secure job. All spare money was reinvested into the business yet we lived well.
We did not have an aversion to debt, and as it was easy to remortgage our home and increase our credit card limits, we took advantage of this to grow our business and enjoy our life.
Selling this business 20 years later enabled us to clear all debt and start our second business, which started as a bricks-and-mortar and then turned mobile as we took the leap to travel full time.
Gardening, Camping, and Plenty of Outdoor activities
Whilst bringing up a family, we chose to settle in one spot and this did have many advantages.
Owning a house enabled a huge fruit and vegetable garden, we enjoyed camping in our spare weekends, encouraged our kids to play sports, and had lots of fun and adventure.
Although we did have a couple of overseas holidays and many weekends interstate, most travel opportunities were limited to within 500km (300 miles) of our home.
Growing a lot of our own food and cooking from scratch helped us to live on a low food budget. Camping, sport, and outdoor activities gave me practical knowledge for living a nomadic lifestyle.
Changing Priorities.
My goals and priorities changed with age and 10 years ago I decided I no longer wished for a big house (just so I could have rooms I never used and needed to spend so much time cleaning).
I did not want to return to full-time work and wanted a semi-retired lifestyle. Fortunately, my husband had a similar change of heart so we were both on the same page.
Although we have stopped traveling for the moment, we are still living in our motorhome. Living in a small space has a lot of advantages.
We live a simple lifestyle with few possessions and are working on improving our health and wellness, building some savings, prospecting for gold, fossicking for stones and gems, and creating jewelry. At the same time, I am continuing to learn marketing and branding, and growing this blog so we have a future that will provide freedom and travel full-time.
I Love gardening – But.
In our past life, we had acreage and a large garden.
We no longer want to spend a whole day every month, and time after work each day tending to our garden, although it was nice to have an acre of lawn, 50 odd fruit trees, and heaps of vegetable beds, it was a lot of work.
When we do get a home base and reduce our travels, I will have a small garden just for some fresh vegetables. I have been doing a little gardening during the pandemic break.
Living on a low income.
I have always budgeted and lived on varying lower incomes for most of my life.
During the pandemic, we stayed on a small leased block of dirt without power (we use solar, gas & generator) or mains water, (we cart it in). Living without utilities teaches us to save water and reduce our reliance on power.
Both lessons greatly reduce our expenses helping to build our savings.
Supplementing our food budget with our own produce helps keep our food costs down. Our current vegetable beds are small and provide us with just enough to support our diet.
We have very few possessions due to downsizing to a motor home, no assets as we sold them earlier, no debts, have closed our business, and have had part-time jobs.
We are living simply and have saved wherever we can to build up our finances so that we can again have some savings to restart our travel journey and continue our retirement.
The thing is, I can choose to stay or travel as finances and the mood dictates. Freedom is having choices.
Traveling is in our bones.
We want the freedom to travel in our retirement and I want to have an income that comes from something I love to do – dabble with writing and crafts.
By sharing my beautiful country with others, I want to inspire people to take the plunge and get out of the rat race and enjoy the beautiful countryside.
As long as I can do it MyWay I am happy.
Will you join me?
Join me in my journey to transition from a traveling salesperson with a retail business to a full-time RV’er with time to create and enjoy my hobbies.
I will share my business knowledge, RV experience, lifestyle, thoughts and opinions, document my fossicking and prospecting finds and share my joy of nature through photography.
Join my journey here and on social media.
KerryAnn